Diamonds and Rust: Wizarding in the Seventies
by LilLolaBlue
Summary: The 70's! Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll! See! The truth about Spinner's End! See! The Marauders! See! Mouldy Auld Voldy's secrets! See! The bitter feud between Snape & Sirius! See! Lily, Snape & James love triangle! Unbearable Lightness/Naked Lunch AU. Grooovy
1. Prelude: 1968

**Prelude: 1968, Spinner's End Council Estate, Kensington, Liverpool.**

The dirtiest part of the great and muddy Mersey practically ran right through the tiny, crowded-in backyard of a ramshackle house. The crumbling ruin was surrounded by other houses just as sloping, ancient, and untidy.

The Spinner's End estate wasn't just a neighbourhood of the working class or the even the poor. It was a real low down sort of place, the kind of place that nice middle-class people who thought their taxes were too high frequently got the horrors about.

It's citizens were the kind of people that middle class people get the horrors about. Drunks, junkies, criminals, prostitutes and the like, living eternally on the dole, on the fiddle, and on the fringes of society in wretched half bombed-out slums un-repaired since World War II or before. Endless teeming generations living in drunken, drug-addled squalor, producing, ignoring and abusing their unfortunate offspring, who, if they were not beaten to death or succumbed to disease grew up to be just like them.

But it was the only home the stringy-haired, dirty little boy of about seven or eight in trainers held together with tape, dressed in a tatty wizard's robe that was too big for him and a stained pair of old jeans knew, and he was well-adapted to it.

There was a fence between the back garden and the river, but it was easy enough for a little boy to climb over. He made his way over the fence, took off his shoes and his robe, rolled up his cuffs and waded into the thick black muck that was riverbed when the river was at high tide.

He had a sack in his hand, and he picked through the mire, occasionally dropping things into the sack.

Every once in awahile he wiped his muddy hand on his pants, and brushed the hair out of his eyes, or pushed his National Health round specs, which were held together with tape, up his long hawk-like nose.

One eye was purple and swollen shut, and every once in awhile, his nose would drip blood a little and he would wipe it.

The boy jumped when the back door of the house slammed shut.

Tobias Snape strode into the sunlight, squinting. His furry barrel chest was bare, and his red hair was unkempt. He had a split lip and two of his fingers were taped together, but the great oxlike slab of a Scotsman seemed none the worse for wear, striding into his back garden dressed in only one of three threadbare kilts that he owned, with a sackful of cans of beer tucked under his arm.

It was the middle of the day, and a workday, but Tobias was one the dole, and worked only piecemeal, as a labourer down at the docks. He and his wife were both degenerate alcoholics, but of the two Tobias was more functional, and it was up to him, in that capacity, to do what he could to look after his young son, and, sometimes his wife, as well.

He picked up an overturned patio chair, and another which didn't match, and sat down in one of them.

"Sev! There ye are lad! Quit pickin through that mud and come up and sit wi' yer old man."

"You ain't mad at me, are ye, Da?" his son called back, warily.

"Sure I ain't! Dinna worry! I ain't off on a tear. C'mon."

That was good enough for the boy. Tobias was only violent when he was on a drunk. He was always drunk, but only dangerous when on a weeklong bender kind of drunk. Which was more than young Severus could say for his mother. Eileen Snape was usually drunk, as well, but she was also a junkie, and a bit mad. You never knew when she was going to be nice or go off. And whether she hit you or hexed you, it was no fun.

Covered in mud, Snape made his way up the bank, and climbed over the fence with his sack.

"Look at all this stuff, Da." He chirped.

"Put that dirty sack o shite down, boy! Look at ye, ye're all covered in filth! Haven't you any clean clothes? I gave yer mother money for food and to go to the laundrette last night before I left."

Severus shook his head.

"Just one more shirt. Mum went out right after you done. When she come back, she went in the kitchen and fixed. I guess she spent all the money on smack. I'm hungry, Da." The boy reported.

"Fuckin' whore! You stay here a minute, Sev." Tobias thundered

Severus sat on the ground, going through his treasures, oblivious to the sounds of fighting and screaming in the house. He also paid no attention to the crash of a body falling to the ground, or the flash of blue light.

Young Sev was used to it.

His parents' life was an endless rotation of drinking, fighting and shagging; they were always doing one or the other or some combination, usually with rock records blaring all the while. They were a bit mad, both if them, and he supposed, so he would be, too, when he grew up. Sev tried his best to get out of the way so that he caught as little of the fallout as he could. And when they were reasonably sane and sober, his parents appeared to, in some crazy way, love him, and each other.

He considered himself more fortunate than some of the other neighbourhood kids; at least his violent parents didn't hate him, and hate each other, and his Da worked some of the time.

Tobias strode out again, burning leeches off his chest with the end of his fag and swearing.

His split lip had been re-opened.

"Woman, the next time I gi' you money for food an' such, don't you fuckin' shoot it up yer arm!" Tobias yelled as he sat down in the chair.

Dressed in a witch's robe with nothing on under it, Eileen Snape followed him out the door. She was tall, black-haired and painfully thin where she had once been willowy, and had regained only the ghost of her beauty under the ravages of booze and cheap street skag cut with strychnine and baking soda.

Sporting a fresh black eye, she pulled up another chair.

"I knew I was going to sell some potions later on today, I would have made the money up, Toby. But you're right, I suppose." She agreed.

"Still, next time you'd better ask me a bit more nicely, or I'll hex you into the next decade!" Eilleen finished.

Tobias was having some difficulty with the leeches; every time he burned one off another one grew back in a different place.

"Goddamnit, Ellie, this is worse than a bit of a shiner!" he cried.

Eileen handed her wand to her son, chuckling.

"Do you remember how to stop the leech hex, Sev?" she asked.

"I think so." Severus replied.

"Good. Fix Daddy." Eileen encouraged.

Sev gave his mother back her wand, and slyly drew one out of the robe he'd been wearing, pointed the wand at his father and said something in a language Tobias didn't understand, and the leeches disappeared.

"Where did you get that, Sev?" Eileen asked.

"I found it in the river. Lookit this, Da. Fink it's a toy truck. It's all busted up, though."

"So it is. Give that here, lad. I'll fix it up for yer, make it go. Awright, then, urf wi' those Levis."

"But Da…"

"No buts!"

Sev stripped down to his greying y-fronts and Tobias sprayed the garden hose over him.

He giggled and Tobias laughed his booming laugh.

Eileen went into the house and came up with a disreputable towel, with which young Snape dried himself.

"Lemme see yer eye."

"S'not so bad."

"Aww, shite! My old man, Sev, he used to get drunk and beat the shite out of me. He were a wicked old bastard, and I was glad to see the back of 'im. We was lucky, Mum and I that the Nazis got him. She dinna think so, though. Bastard got 'imself killed and took Mum with him. He hated me an' I felt tha same. But I dinna hate ye, lad. Ellie, I don't hate you, neither. But I go mad when I'm on a bender. It's like I ain't meself. I'm sorry, I am. I ought ter go back to sea, gi' away from the both of you." Tobias said, ruefully.

"No, Da! Don't go!" Sev cried.

"It's alright, Sev. Da's not going anywhere. Toby, stay here with Sev and I. We need each other. All three of us. You know I understand you." Eileen volunteered, reaching for Tobias' hand.

They both looked worriedly at their son, who was too young to understand.

He was pointing his wand and some broken things in his sack.

"_Reparo! Reparo! Reparo_!"

Tobias opened up two beers and handed one to his wife.

"Have a sip, lad. Did yer nose stop gushing from yer Mum's nosebleed hex?"

"Mostly."

Tobias took the can back from his son.

"Good."

He pulled something out from under the chair.

It was a brown paper bag.

"Here ye are, Sev. I bought these for yer."

Snape opened the bag.

It had a stack of records in it. The Beatles, Cream, the Who, Small Faces, Rolling Stones, there had to be about twenty records in it. LP's too.

"Fuck me! Where did you get these, Da?" young Snape squeaked.

"Won 'em last night. You go take a bath and Mum will find you some clean clothes. Play them records good an' loud an piss off that old cunt Jim Richmond next door. When ye're all ready to go, we'll go to the shops and the laundrette. Okay?"

Severus carefully scourgified his sack and his repaired treasures and put them away.

"Okay." He said.

Eileen found her son some clean clothes, and he took a bath, got dressed and came out in some clean but still tatty-looking clothes, carrying a portable record player.

He felt around in the pockets of his jacket.

"Lose your smokes?" Tobias asked his son.

"Yeah." Snape piped.

"'Ave one of Dad's."

Tobias cracked open three more beers. He handed one to his son as the sounds of "Disraeli Gears" filled the air.

"Don't let him have a whole beer, Toby! Sev, you only drink half of that. I'll put some tinfoil on it and you can have the rest later. Did you see him do his spells, Toby? He does spells at a third year level and he hasn't even been to school. He's a genius." Eileen bragged.

"Takes after you, Ellie." Tobias agreed.

The cosy family moment was interrupted by a cry from the house next door.

"Turn that shit off you little prick!"

"Shut tha fuck up, Richmond, ya lousy cunt! Or I'll come over there an bust wot teeth ya got left outa yer fuckin' raddled old junkie head!" Tobias thundered.

The voice fell silent.

"An' fuck you!" Little Snape yelled.

He puffed on his fag and had another sip of beer.

Big Snape ruffled his hair, affectionately.

"That's me boy!" he said.


	2. 1970

**Chapter 1: 1970**

Toby and Ellie Snape's son Severus was somewhat of a community project in Spinner's End. The residents of "the End" disliked police and bureaucrats; they'd take the Crown's money but they didn't want any of Her Majesty's Royal Busybodies poking their toffee noses about. The last thing they wanted to see was Sev taken away from them, and put in a home.

Possibly sent South, and put in a home with Southerners, even!

To that end, everyone in the End who was better off than Ellie and Toby Snape did what they could for the lad.

When his parents were on a bender such that they literally forgot that he was around, Severus could find a safe haven with his Uncle Angus, and his older cousin, Faith.

Uncle Angus, like his brother, was an alcoholic, but he was a functional alcoholic (i.e., an Englishman) He wasn't on the dole and he had a steady job on the docks. He took good care of his daughter, Faith, who, in turn, took good care of her cousin Sev.

Faith was a true Snape, short, square, stocky and strong, with freckles and a mass of curly bright ginger hair. She wasn't the most beautiful girl in the world, but she was very pretty when she smiled, and was almost always smiling.

Faith was a real flower in the dustbin, and she was more of a mother to Severus than Ellie was. If it hadn't been for Faith, her cousin may still have been in diapers when he was five. She was seven years older and took it upon herself to teach Sev how to survive in the End. She showed him how to scrap, scavenge, swear and smoke, and more importantly, it was Faith who taught Severus to read and write, and do maths. Sev never went to school, so Faith taught him from her books after class.

Of course, Severus had also been adopted by the closest thing the End had to a community leader, Artie "Tommy Boy" Evans. Artie Evans, de facto mayor of Spinner's End, was a big deal Liverpool gangster, and the End was his fiefdom. He had the nicest house on the estate. The back garden was neat, the fence got freshly painted every year and it was always in good repair.

It was the same on the inside, all fresh paint and modern appliances and a brand new colour telly, big as life and twice as gaudy. Both of his daughters, Lily and Petunia, had their own bedrooms, and both Artie and his wife, Deirdre had a car of their own. They could have lived in much better circumstances, if it hadn't been for Artie's profession and his sentimental attachment to the neighbourhood where he'd grown up.

His feelings for his family and his neighbourhood were probably the only sentimental feelings Tommy Boy Evans had. He went to work every day with an arsenal on his person and a Tommy gun in a violin case, and he used both freely, not to mention his fists and his wits. Artie was actually one of the nastier villains that Spinner's End produced; he was an enforcer for the local gang boss, and did his job extremely well.

Deirdre Evans had been an orphan; she grew up in the Strawberry Fields Children's Home with Toby and Angus Snape. She hadn't even realised that both of her childhood playmates were living on the Spinner's End estate until her daughter and Toby's son became friends.

Severus Snape was always welcome in the Evans family home, day or night. Artie Evans let him have his own key to the front door. His parents, now long dead, had been of similar calibre to Snape's; he wanted to see the lad make good and not end up a piece of shit alkie or junkie, or on the fiddle.

Deirdre and Artie accepted the existence of the Wizarding World rather more calmly that most Muggles. For one thing, they knew that Ellie Snape was a witch; she sold potions and read cards for everyone in the End. They just hadn't known she was a witch in the literal sense. Besides, between the two of them, they had seen it all, and the idea of witches and wizards wasn't all that unusual or frightening. The Evanses welcomed the opportunity for their Lily to go to a prestigious school and have a chance at a much better life than either of her parents.

Not to mention an opportunity for Ellie's son to get away from his parents and have the chance at a decent life he's never get in Toby and Ellie's hovel.

Oddly enough, Deidre and Ellie had become friends, despite the differences between them. They weren't really as big as people might have thought.

She often sat with Ellie in her kitchen while Lily and Sev played in Lily's bedroom upstairs.

"I can't get over how he's good as gold for you, here, Lily. Our Sev's not like that at home. Well, sometimes he is, and other times I could swear he's the Devil's son. Rosemary's fucking baby, yunno? You wouldn't believe the kind of shit he gets up to. I've had to double lock and triple ward my potions laboratory, he goes in and drinks the potions. And we have to lock the booze up and put it out of his reach, or he'll drink that too. All we ever gave him was a few sips of beer. He doesn't like to listen, he hates to follow rules. It's not as if I have many rules. His favourite one to break is no smoking in bed. Someday he'll burn the house down. I don't know. I shouldn't have taught him so much magic, already, and the gods only know where he got that wand. I think school ought to be good for him. If he doesn't burn Hogwarts to the ground." Ellie observed.

"Maybe he acts up to get you and Toby to pay more attention to him." Deirdre suggested.

"No. He takes after his father and I, the gods know. He's a regular Bad Seed." Ellie replied.

Deirdre was always trying to get the Snapes to realise that their parenting skills left a lot to be desired. Tobias tried, but Ellie seemed oblivious; she really thought she was a regular Mother of the Year.

"He spends the whole day with me! I teach him about magic, and potions, I even let him help me in me lab. I'll miss him when he's gone, my little Sev." She mused.

Deirdre opened her mouth to say something, and then she decided not to, and poured out another cup of tea.

As Artie was fond of saying, "The less you notice, the longer you'll live."

* * *

Deirdre and Artie Evans sent their Lily off to Hogwarts' School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with a brand new trunk, new books, the best of parchments and quills, a brand-new robe, skirt, blouse and tights for every day of the week, several pairs of socks and shoes, brand new Muggle clothes, a cat/kneazle hybrid named Tommy Boy, a velvet-lined mahogany case for her wand and generally the best of everything that Artie's dirty money could buy, not to mention a nice tidy sum in an account at Gringotts.

Tobias and Eileen Snape provided their son with his mother's old school trunk, one set of robes, two second-hand and ill-fitting button down shirts, one pair of dress shoes he had to stuff the toes with to fit in, three pairs of greyish y-fronts, a broken quill, outdated editions of his books with pages missing, his meagre clothing and possessions, the wand he'd found in the river, and the clothes on his back.

One pair of Levis, one pair of mismatched sweatsocks, one black tee shirt that said "The Beatles" on it, one Army surplus jumper, and one pair of basketball trainers patched up with duck tape.

That went over well with the yobs on the Hogwarts Express, who ventured to make fun of Severus until he began throwing some of Eileen's wicked hexes at them.

At the end of that very long day, Severus noisily dumped his trunk by the bed closest to the window in the dorm room to which he'd been assigned.

So far, this whole Hogwarts trip was a real cock up.

He and Lily had been sorted into different houses, and just about everybody in the school was kitted out better than he was. Not that anything like that impressed Snape. On the whole, they were all a bunch of dumb kids who didn't know shit about life, and they were like as not no better off than they ought to have been. Severus didn't know who the three blokes he was rooming with were and he didn't care, so long as he still had all his classes with Lily and he had the bed closest to the window so he could smoke.

He opened the window and lit a cigarette.

They were all a bunch of thick yobs, in their clean shirts and their shiny shoes. They'd never taken a real beating, gone hungry, or had a smoke or a beer, and they didn't know what the world was really like. Most of them had never lifted a finger to do anything in all their lives, and the older ones didn't seem much better, or smarter.

Severus resolved to stick to his studies and stick with Lily and try to have as little to do with the rest of these toffee-nosed gits as possible.

"Hey, you! Are you smoking?"

Speaking of toffee-nosed gits, whoever spoke had a posh BBC newsreader accent, and Severus was instinctively replulsed by toffs.

He turned around and saw an impeccably dressed Elvish looking blond kid, flanked by a tall, skinny moron and a short, squat moron.

"What's it to you, Hooray Henry?" Snape sneered.

The fat moron didn't seem to like it, and he made a move towards Severus, who had his wand out in a flash.

"_Faucsistus_!" he cried, pointing his wand at fatso's face, which immediately eruped in leeches.

"Keep your distance, you fat prick. Don't fuck with me, or you're in for seven years of sheer hell." Snape warned.

The blond toff seemed impressed.

"Quit your fussing, Crabbe! I say, a leech hex! That's brilliant. Where did you learn that?" Blond Toff asked.

Fat Prick, or Crabbe, his name was, kept on about the leeches.

"Crabbe, I told you to shut the fuck up!"

"But Luke, me face…"

"SHUT UP!"

Blond Toff turned back to Snape.

"I'm terribly sorry to interrupt you. Go ahead, please."

Snape was beginning to like this kid.

"Me Mum taught me. You want a fag?"

"Sure."

Snape casually rescinded the curse, and gave Blond Toff a cigarette.

You could tell it was his first smoke, but he didn't dare cough.

Impressive.

"I'm Malfoy." He said, as if Snape should be impressed.

"And I'm Henry the Eighth, I am. Sorry, don't know you."

"Are you a Mudblood?"

"No. I'm a Scouser. I'm from Liverpool."

"See! I told you he talked just like one of the Beatles!" Goyle broke in.

Malfoy shot him a withering look.

"No, a Mudblood is somebody whose parents are both Muggles."

"Well, neither of me parents are what you said. Me Mum's a witch and me Da's a Scotsman."

Lucius tried not to laugh at his new friend.

"Your Mum didn't explain much to you about the Wizarding World, did she?" he asked.

"No. She just taught me lots of spells and hexes. And how to mix potions. I dunno. Me parents don't have a lot of time for me. We're poor, and they're drunk all the time." Snape confessed.

"What a coincidence. My parents don't have a lot of time for me, either. We're filthy fucking rich, and they're drunk all the time." Lucius replied.

Snape laughed.

"I'm Snape. Severus Snape. You?"

"Lucius Malfoy. The fat idiot is Crabbe and the skinny idiot is Goyle. They do what I tell them. And now, they do what you tell them, as well."

"Really." Snape asked.

"Of course. Try it."

"You, Goyle! You and yer fat friend, go find me a few more of those Chocolate Frogs! Look sharp!" Snape barked.

Crabbe and Goyle made tracks.

Snape took a long drag on his fag.

"Cool." He said to his new friend.

* * *

Severus adjusted quickly to life at Hogwarts.

He wasn't very popular, and a lot of his fellow students didn't like him, but Snape could have cared less. He didn't much care what the other kids thought; he was happy to have a warm bed and three squares a day. When he found out he couldn't respond to being made fun of with outright hexes, he started setting his enemies up with nasty potions poured over their clothes, books, and possessions, and quiet curses under his breath between classes.

In confrontations, those who were subjected to his withering insults often shrank from him like they'd been hit; and even though most of his tormentors were larger than he, Snape was physically fearless. He wasn't shy about handing out the boot pies and knuckle sandwiches when he had to, and detention with his teachers didn't bother him; it was just an opportunity to soak up more precious knowledge.

Unlike most of the yobs and slobs he went to school with, Snape was interested in learning; when Lily and Luke were at Quidditch practise, he was in the library, reading, memorising, taking notes, digesting.

Severus wasn't the type to think that life was a popularity contest. He had his best mate, Lily, and he was friends with Luke, his roommate, and Grabbe and Goyle were terrified of him and stayed out of his way.

Most of the teachers considered him and Lily the brightest students in their year, and Sanpe could see why, as the great majority of his fellow students were arseholes. Especially the ones he and Lily called the Fantastic Four.

There was Potter, he was the ringleader. Unlike Snape, he was uncool enough to wear his glasses all the time. He was pretty much a jock arsehole and a square. Then there was Black. Snape was a Prince on his mother's side, and the Blacks and the Princes had hated one another since time immemorial. Besides that, Black was a conceited jock arsehole who though he was the greatest thing going. And that fat little toady Pettigrew was like a mishmash of Grabbe and Goyle, but with less charm. Lupin wasn't so bad, he was a real quiet sort of kid who was too skinny and was always all banged up. He was the only ten year old chain smoker Snape had ever met. He was nervous as hell, and he always had a carton of smokes. They used to go in the prefects bathroom and smoke and talk to Moaning Myrtle at recess to avoid the other kids.

Slughorn, the Potions Master was ape over Snape; he had his whole future planned out, but Snape didn't see where there was a whole lot of money in teaching yobbo kids how to do something most of them were fucking lousy at.

On the whole, though, Snape really loved Hogwarts. Nobody ever beat him up or yelled at him, he could have something to eat any time he wanted and everything was calm and orderly and rational and reasonable every day.

Until the first time that he and Sirius Black got into real trouble, together.

The other members of the Fantastic Four didn't consider mocking Snape a sport the way Sirius did. He was all over him, all the time. Sirius even gave him a demeaning nickname, Snivellus. Snape had already infested his textbooks with a vanishing potion that made half of the pertinent information disappear, but Black didn't pay much attention to his textbooks, so that wasn't much help. And he wasn't smart enough to realise who it was that put the Rabbit Hex on him causing him to sprout fluffy pink and white bunny ears and a cottontail.

He even asked twitchy Remus to call Black off, and Remus had looked at him like he was out of his mind.

Severus had reached the end of his rope.

They were all in the Great Hall, having lunch when Sirius came by the Slytherin table and delivered his comment du jour.

"Man, Snivellus, you eat like a pig. But you look like one, too, so I'm not surprised."

Calmly, young Severus stopped eating, and got out of his chair.

"Right! Come on, you cowardly tiff cunt! Let's have yer! Take yer best shot! I'm givin' it to yer!" Snape insisted.

Severus had taken a punch in the face from his Ox-like slab of a drunken ex-sailor father, so he knew that a tap from some sawed-off Black bastard wasn't going to faze him much.

He tasted blood, and it only made him angrier.

Severus smiled through his bloody lips, and didn't waver in the least.

"Shit." Sirius said.

"What I'm gonna do to you shouldn't happen to a fucking dog." Severus said as he opened his assault by spitting a mouthful of blood into Sirius' eyes.

Sirius instinctively threw his hands in front of his face, and Snape took the opportunity to punch him in the solar plexus.

Sirius crumpled up like an empty paper sack, and fell to the ground.

Tobias never hit him once he was on the ground.

Eileen had no such scruples.

Neither did her son.

First he kicked his enemy in the face, to give him something to think about when he looked in the mirror.

He then moved on to the belly and the ribs.

Severus was only dimly aware of the sound of his own voice, uttering some of his father's choicest curses in a far less baritone bellow as he repeatedly kicked his tormentor, over and over.

"Again, Sev! Kick the bastard again! Show 'im how we do it in the End!" Lily encouraged him.

He didn't stop until he felt two pairs of hands, and four arms lifting him away.

"You listen to me, Black! You'd better leave me the fuck alone! I'll make the GBH I done on you today look like a kiss! Next time I'll fuckin' kill you, d'you hear me! I'll kill you!" Severus howled as they dragged him away.

Another chapter in the ancient and sometimes bloody feud between the Princes and the Blacks had just begun.

* * *

Headmaster Dumbledore looked down his nose and over his desk at the two surly boys.

They eyed one another with hatred, Sirius with his broken ribs and Severus with his fat lip and broken nose.

"Severus, I want to know why you attacked Sirius. Sirius, let Severus speak, you'll get your chance to reply." Dumbledore began.

"I dunno." Severus said.

He was determined to obey the rules he'd learned in the End.

Don't rat, and take your medicine.

He looked defiantly into the Headmaster's eyes.

They were blue, like his father's, but they seemed wise and kind, and invited trust.

"Severus?"

"I won't rat. Not even on him." Snape explained.

"Then I will have to ask someone else. Remus, come in, please."

Snape looked over at Lupin.

Poor kid. He seemed like he really needed a cigarette.

"Remus, has Sirius been making fun of Severus?" Dumbledore asked.

Remus looked at his feet.

"I dunno." He said.

Snape committed to memory that Lupin was not a rat.

"I'll tell you, Headmaster. So I've been teasing Sniv-er, Severus a little bit. That doesn't give him the right to beat the shi-I mean, the crap out of me!" Sirius cried.

"No, Sirius, you're right. However, it seems that if you made Severus angry enough to physically attack you, to him it might seem like more than teasing. You have a family, and a home, and they have provided you with nice things. That does not give you the right to torment those who are less fortunate than you are. You have intelligence, and wit and privilege, Sirius. Now you must learn grace." Dumbledore told him.

Then he turned to Severus Snape.

"Severus, I understand that you come from a place where you do unto others before they do unto you. You've probably seen more violence and despair in ten short years than I have in nearly two centuries. That said, you have the opportunity here, at Hogwarts, to leave that behind you, and make a better life for yourself. And perhaps, for your family as well. If you continue to act out violently, with spells and hexes and fists, you won't be able to stay here. I know you don't want that to happen, and neither do I."

Snape was surprised the old man understood so well.

He wanted to say something, but kept his poker face in front of Remus and Sirius.

"I am going to suspend both of you for a week. Sirius, you will go home to your parents. Severus, you'll stay at Hogwarts, but you'll be away from your classes and your common room. Both of you will receive your assignments via owl post, and your professors will expect them to be completed when you return. You'll have detention the week you come back, and you're both banned from extracurricular activities for four weeks, including the week of your suspension. You boys and I both know about the feud between the Blacks and the Princes. It had erupted into a blood feud more than once, and I want to stop a re-occurrence before it starts. I will severely punish you, Sirius, for continuing to harass Severus. And Severus, if you continue your campaign of violence and revenge against Sirius, you will also be severely punished. I have owled your parents, Sirius, your father is waiting for you in the Great Hall. As for you, Severus, I'd like you to say in the office a few moments longer."

Severus watched his enemy go.

They had been chastised equally and punished, equally.

If nothing else, Dumbledore was a fair man.

The Headmaster took off his glasses, as looked at him again, with those curiously sympathetic eyes.

Blue, like his father's.

"Your mother was one of the most brilliant witches in her year. Your grandfather, Severus Prince, was always an excellent student. I almost made him Head Boy instead of Tom Riddle, but he was self conscious about his appearance. He's certainly one of the finest Potions Masters in the Wizarding World, and your grandmother, Aphrodite, was the best Divination teacher at Hogwarts in 200 years. I could never understand what happened to your mother, what it was that led her to become such a troubled woman. Her parents couldn't help her. I couldn't help her. She graduated at the top of her class but didn't attend the ceremony. For awhile I didn't know what happened to her, then I found out about her marriage to your father, and about you. They're both very young, and very troubled, Severus. And now, so are you. I want to help you, and Eileen, and Tobias. Tell me everything. I won't rat on you to the Ministry, and let them separate you from your parents. You have my word."

Severus would have liked to have cried when he told the whole story to the Headmaster, but for him, tears were difficult to come by.

Dumbledore, on the other hand, listened to his young student's forthright tale of madness, addiction, depravity and poverty with eyes filled with tears.

He wiped them, and smiled reassuringly at the lad.

"I'm going to try to get some help for your Mum and Dad. Until they've had it, though, they won't be able to take care of you the way you should be. Until then, I'd like to take care of you, if you wouldn't mind." Dumbledore said.

_Fuck, this nice old duffer wants to be me step-dad. God only knows me parents need help. And they won't hardly talk to Grandmum and Granddad. A kid me age shouldn't be all alone, should he? _Snape thought.

"I still get to go home for holidays. And during the summer?" Snape asked.

"Yes. But you can always come back here, if things get rough." Dumbledore agreed.

"And you can get Mum an Da to sort their shit out? Ooops. Sorry."

"I can try."

Snape shrugged.

Tobias always said, when opportunity knocks, don't yell, "Fuck off, me progrmme's on."

"Sounds good." He replied.

* * *

The first thing Snape got out of the deal was lots of new clothes, and books, and school things, and a new trunk. He didn't want a new wand, but he got a familiar. He picked it out himself, an iguana he named Zeppelin. But he also got a strange kind of peace of mind in knowing that somebody was looking out for him, something he supposed that all the other kids had always had, and took for granted.

Between Albus Dumbledore's kindness, and the comfort, stability and structure he got at Hogwarts, Severus didn't really want to go back to shit Spinner's End for Chrimble.

But he sort of missed his Mum and Da, even if they were mad.

Lily told him not to go.

Artie Evans came up to drive his daughter and her friend back to Liverpool, and he discouraged Severus, too.

"My old man was like your old man, Sev. He meant well, when he was sober, and he wasn't a bad man. He didn't even remember beating Mum to death; he called the police crying like a baby and saying somebody killed his wife. But he killed Mum just the same and he swung for it. It's only a matter of time before Toby or Ellie do for you, or each other. Stay here at school. Or come stay with us, and just visit with them." The gangster suggested.

Snape didn't listen.

* * *

Later in life, he would often tell the story in a skewed way to make a point, but, truth to be told, Severus always thought that what happened was his fault as much as his parents.

Tobias seemed to be glad that his son was moving up in the world, but Ellie didn't like what she considered Albus Dumbledore's meddling. The first night Severus was home she ordered him to throw his new clothes into the fire, and he told her to get stuffed.

Ellie smacked Severus in the mouth, and then Tobias smacked Ellie in the mouth.

"You leave the boy be, Ellie. Let him have summat, God knows we can't give it to him." Tobias warned.

"I'll let you have something, you motherfucker!" Ellie retorted.

Ellie got out her wand and Severus headed for his bedroom, and double-warded the door. He lay on the bed all night listening to them fight, doing little spells, petrified that one or both of them would be dead in the morning.

What a prezzie for Chrimble that would be.

However, a few black eyes and bloody noses and a pair of horns that Ellie assured Tobias would fall off, eventually, later, Christmas morning didn't go too badly. Severus and Tobias watched telly for most of the day, until Ellie traditionally burned dinner to a crisp, and they had Chinese take-away.

While his parents were passed out from too much booze and MSG, Severus finally managed to get hold of a half a bottle of his mother's fabled Hell's Horntail, and about the same amount of his father's cheap Scotch.

He decided to make a real Happy Chrimble go at it, nicked his Mum's next fix from her pocket, cooked it up, put it in the needle and shot it into his drink.

He found some stamps in her pocket that most assuredly were not stamps, and let two of them dissolve on his tongue before drinking his cocktail.

Bottoms up.

Severus never could recall as to what possessed him to set the Christmas tree on fire. It had seemed like a very good idea at the time to burn the house down, very rational. Snape had always wanted to burn the house down just to show Mum and Da, well, just to show them they weren't the only hard nuts in the family. Get his own back. Kill all three of them. Torch the whole rotten neighbourhood. Or maybe he'd set the fire just to watch it burn.

Or something.

The drapes caught on fire as well, and then the room began to fill with smoke, which woke Tobias and Ellie up.

She conjured up this cool freezing spell as his father ran out of the kitchen with an empty wine jug full of water, and the fire was out.

Tobias hit him, hard, with a closed fist, right in the stomach.

"You stay out of our things, boy!" he shouted.

Severus lit a cigarette.

"Yeah, yeah. Do as you say, not as you do. Coupla fuckin' drunks gettin' all 'igh and mighty on me. Fuck you." He replied, sourly.

Tobias slapped the cigarette right out of his mouth.

"Get your li'le arse to your room! If I didn't know you ate up Christ knows wot yer Mum was holding, I'd really show you wot for! Go!"

Snape fled upstairs to the sound of arguing again.

He had fallen asleep when the door opened and his mother came in.

The old man had beaten her up pretty bad for leaving her dope out for him to get to.

Severus was afraid.

When the old man beat her up pretty bad over something she did or didn't do for him, he always got it.

"What the fuck is the matter with you, Severus? You really are the fucking Anitchrist! You did this on purpose so you could ruin the holiday and get your Dad to do me up a treat, didn't you? Well, I'm going to make the beating he gave me look like a kiss. I'll teach you to get into me stash."

She had that vacant, shark-like look in her black eyes that she got when she was strung out. She didn't know what she was going when she got strung out.

And she was unwinding a length of brown lamp cord.

Severus immediately began screaming for his father.

* * *

Tobias lay unconscious on the floor, the victim of a stunning spell and a glass ashtray upside the head.

He awake, groggily to the sound of his wife screaming.

"Toby! Oh God, Toby, he's dead! Sev's dead! I've killed him! Toby, I didn't mean to! Help me! Somebody help me!"

Tobias struggled to make it up the stairs.

In his son's bedroom, his wife was having hysterics, suddenly sobered by shock.

There was blood on her, and blood on the floor, and Severus was on the floor, too, his new jumper and shirt in bloody ribbons on his back.

"Dear Jesus, Ellie, what did you do?" Tobias asked.

He bent down beside Severus, and gently turned him over.

The boy was alive.

He was crying softly, and he threw his arms weakly in front of his face.

"Don't hit me no more. I'm sorry. Don't hit me." He begged.

"I'm not gonna hit yer, Sev. If you live, I swear by Christ I'll never hit you again! Come on, let's pick you up. That's a good lad. We'll get you cleaned up, then Da and Mum will take you home to Hogwarts. You can have your Chrimble wi' Minerva and Albus. Okay?"

Tobias and Ellie washed their son up, and bandaged him up a little, and they helped him get dressed.

Tobias carried him downstairs, and Ellie threw some Floo powder into the hearth.

They came out in Albus Dumbledore's office, and found him and Minerva McGonagall having a cup to tea and an extra piece of Christmas cake.

They both froze, and neither one of them could move, at the sight of the three soot-covered, bloody, bruised and battered Snapes.

"Mr. Dumbledore, I'm bringin' the lad to you. Ellie and I, we want you an' Mrs. Dumbledore to be his Mum and Da. The two of us ain't fit to raise a dog, let alone a son. I hope you'll still let him see Ellie and I. Mebbe you can come along wi' him, or we can see him at me brother's house, or Ellie's parents' house."

Severus tugged on Tobias' ripped tee shirt.

"No, Da. It's awright. I'll be fine. It was me fault. I tried to burn the house down." He said.

"Because you got inter me booze and yer Mum's dope an' went wild. Nae, Sev. You deserve a better lot in life than that. I'm doin' this cos I love you. Dinna forget that. Or your old man. I'm sorry, lad."

Dumbledore got up from his desk and he was walking across the room.

"I love you too, Sev. I'm sorry I hit you. You know Mum didn't mean it. I'm so sorry."

Ellie cried and she and Tobias hugged their son, gently.

Then Tobias handed Severus into Albus Dumbledore's arms.

"You've made the right choice. Thank you. I'll take care of him, all his life, I swear an oath to that." Dumbledore promised in a swirl of magic.

"Can we clean up, somewhere, before yuh turn us over to the rozzers?" Tobias asked.

"Maybe we can work something out without getting the police involved just yet. I'll take Severus to the infirmary."

* * *

The nurse patched Severus up, and gave him something to make him sleep. He didn't fight it.

It was blessed relief, a wonderful escape.

Almost as good as the heroin and the Horntail.

But not quite.

* * *

While young Severus convalesced in the infirmary, the adults in his life decided his future in the waning days of the year.

Dumbledore let the Ministry in on the case insofar as to tell him that Tobias and Eileen wanted to give up their son into his acre and that of Minerva McGonagall, at least until they were able to solve their problems with alcoholism and drug addiction. A representative went to talk to Severus in the Infirmary, and she didn't believe his story that his injuries had resulted from him setting the Christmas tree on fire.

Tobias and Eileen confessed fully, even without Dumbledore telling them he would tell the truth even if they did not.

At first, the Ministry wanted the boy to go to his grandparents, but they determined he would still have too much exposure to his mother and father if he was placed there. Dumbledore thought that was unfair; he always thought the Ministry was prejudiced against Snape's maternal grandparents because, respectively, Severus Prince's grandfather had been a faun and Aphrodite Lovegood Prince's grandmother had been a veela, and that their reason was just an excuse

Severus Snape was made a ward of the Ministry, and his parents gave up their rights to him. Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall quickly adopted him out of that woeful status, as their son by law and magical bond. Tobias and Eileen both pleaded guilty to assault and child endangerment charges, and accepted a sentence of one year in the Hogsmeade Jail in lieu of three months in Azkaban, and five years of probation.

That was where the Ministry's involvement ended and Dumbledore's began. He intended to honour his promise to Severus that he would not take him away from his parents. He decided that young Severus could visit his grandparents for a month during the summer and a week during the holidays, and that his parents could have supervised visitation with him at Hogwarts, or supervised visitation at his grandparents' home during the holidays.

Severus Sr. and Aphrodite agreed to take Severus Jr. to visit his parents in jail once a month.

It was a much better deal than the Snape-Prince family would have gotten from the Ministry, which wanted the family to sever all ties with the boy.

They brought Severus in at the end of the meeting, and he did not take the news well.

As lousy as his parents were, and as crumby as his neighbourhood was, and as filthy as his whole life away from Hogwarts was, it was all he knew, and Severus was afraid to lose it.

The boy began to cry and ran to his father, who, to everyone's surprise, pushed him away.

"None o that, Sev. Tis awaright for a man to cry, when horrible things befall him, but never make a habit of it. And never do in front of anybody who ain't yer mother or yer wife. Ye bear up under yer troubles alone, steady as a rock, and ye strap yerself to the wheel an' take what comes ter ye. Like a man. D'yer understand me, lad?"

Severus stopped crying.

"Yes, Da."

Toby and Ellie knelt down and hugged their son, together.

"Well, I'll be seein' yer. Back to the can I go. Make sure yuh keep sendin' us owls." He said.

"Don't worry about me, Sev. The woman hasn't been born yet to give birth to the woman who can make a fool out of me. Don't make trouble for the Headmaster. Don't set nothin' on fire or blow nothin' up, or any of your Rosemary's Baby tricks. Study hard and make all Outstandings. I'll owl you soon." Ellie instructed.

Aphrodite Prince hugged her grandson and said she'd seen him during the Spring vacation.

And Severus Prince, with his rather foreshortened satyr's horns and his one human foot and one hoof made his way across the room, leaning on his walking stick, and said his goodbyes as well, promising his grandson a trip to the Prince family cottage in the Carpathian mountains.

"This summer, I think you'll be old enough to help me harvest and prepare the herbs. And to learn to play the pipes." He promised.

Snape was brave and he didn't cry, and his family was brave and they didn't cry.

He went back to the empty Slytherin common room, and unpacked his things.

He sat down on his bed with a book and began to read.

When Lily got back, she and Sev went to the place in the woods she discovered, their place where they did their homework and listened to the radio and mucked about.

Severus vowed revenge on the Ministry and swore that no matter what he wasn't going to abandon his Mum and Dad.

Then, he cried his eyes out.

He figured it was alright, as he was going to marry Lily, someday.


	3. 1973

**Chapter 2: 1973**

Myrtle, thinking she smelled something fun going on, floated over to the stall where the giggling was coming from.

The window was open, which was unusual for March, unless somebody wanted certain aromas to go unnoticed

Sure enough, she found Lily and Severus, a couple of third years, wedged into the same stall together, the one closest to the window, smoking a joint.

"Hey, if you guys let me have a little tea, I'll be your lookout." Myrtle volunteered.

"Sure. Cool." Lily said, and passed the joint to Myrtle.

"Wow! This is some gooood shit. Where did you get this?"

"Sev."

"I refuse to divulge me source."

Severus and Lily and Myrtle all began to giggle, then Myrtle went off to do her lookout bit.

A head full off weed gave Lily the sort of lightheaded courage she needed to broach a particular subject with her best friend.

"Look at you, Sev, you've got stubble on your chin. Shaving, are you? An' your arms…they're all furry."

She observed.

Severus gave her an odd look.

"Well, I'm nearly 15. I'll be a man soon, won't I?" he replied.

"I know! So, 'ave you got hair on your chest?" Lily asked.

Severus began to choke.

"What?" He gasped.

Lily suddenly felt terribly embarrassed. Just the look on Sev's face let her know she was barking up the wrong tree.

She was ready to draw her wand, blast the stall door off, obliviate Sev of the last few minutes, and flee, but then he sort of looked down his long nose at her and grinned in a way that made Lily feel as though her head was about to burst into large, incandescent flames.

Severus handed her the joint. While she took a drag, he undid the buttons on his robe, pushed his tie aside, and unbuttoned a few buttons on his shirt.

"Not much. Yet." He said

"I thought you would. Me Mum always says, a Northerner's a man by the time he's 15. You're well on your way, then." Lily stammered.

She put out the roach and stuffed it in her pocket, then, to Severus' surprise, she sandwiched herself even closer to him, rubbing his chest.

"Wot about it, then, Sev? Are you a man?"

Lily couldn't believe she was doing what she was doing.

Neither could Snape.

He suddenly wondered if he was a wake, or if he was having another one of those kind of dreams. Could it be? Did the eternal sex goddess of his most depraved adolescent fantasises actually want him as much as he wanted her?

Was fate finally going to be kind to Severus Snape?

Was Lily going to be upset that it wasn't his belt buckle poking her?

Severus suddenly heard his father's voice in his mind.

_Remember lad, when it comes to women, if they want ter chase ye, let 'em catch yer. Not only is it stupid to turn a woman down when she comes onto ye, it's rude. If a girl offers ye summat, take it. And be glad you've got it, and gi'her summat to come back for_.

"You bet your arse I am." Severus growled, and kissed Lily.

She didn't object.

A good time was generally being had by all until Myrtle, doing her best lookout bit, loomed over the top of the stall.

She could see that Lily and Sev were in a serious clinch, which made things all that much worse.

"Get your shit together! Dumbledore is coming! Dumbledore is coming!" she said.

"Oh shit!" Snape exclaimed.

"Fuck me!" Lily reiterated.

"I was thinking about it." Severus grumbled to himself.

Severus crouched on the top of the toilet so that Dumbledore wouldn't be able to see him, and he flushed the joint, then he and Lily scourgified everything.

She buttoned up her shirt and her robes and smoothed out her clothes, then threw some water on her face in the sink.

Lily made a show of washing her hands in the sink as the Headmaster came in.

"Lily, have you seen Severus? I checked in your study hall, and he wasn't there."

He looked worried.

"Yeah. He went to the gents." Lily lied.

"I just looked in there. Tell him, when he comes back to Study Hall, to report to my office. Immediately. He's not in trouble, but I need to see him, as soon as possible."

Dumbledore left, and Severus came out of the stall, and put himself together, looking in the mirror.

"Do you think its yer Mum?" Lily asked

"I hope not." Severus replied.

He headed for the door, then stopped, turned around, grabbed Lily and kissed her, again.

"We'll finish this, later." He promised.

"I'll hold you to that, Sev. Owl me and let me know what's going on."

* * *

***

When Severus Jr. went to the Headmaster's Office and saw Severus Sr. and his grandmother there, he knew it was just as he feared.

"It's Mum isn't it? She's not dead, is she?" he asked his grandfather.

Severus Sr. tugged on his horn, trying to think of what to say.

"Severus, your mother is at St. Mungo's. She's…"

Dumbledore searched for the right words.

"Bottomed out." Aphrodite volunteered.

Sev breathed a sigh of relief.

"Can I go and see her?" he asked his foster father.

"Of course! You may be excused from classes, today. And tomorrow. I'll come around later, at the end of the school day." Dumbledore told him.

* * *

***

It was a relatively quiet evening at St. Mungo's, and Edgar Lockheart, the chief medi-wizard on the Psychiatric Ward was about to take his tea-break when an eccentric visitor arrived on the ward.

It was a barrel-chested Scotsman, wearing an army-surplus parka over a kilt, a tee shirt and a pair of Doctor Martens boots, carrying what the medi-wizard at first thought was a rag doll or a mannequin swathed in a thick quilt in his arms.

It was only when he was at the desk that Lockheart realised, to his great horror that the Scotsman was bringing him a patient.

"Can someone here see to me wife? I'm a Muggle, but she's a witch." He asked the medi-wizard.

"By the Mother!" the medi-wizard exclaimed, and summoned and army of healers, medi-wizards and witches and nurses who swooped down on the Scotsman and bundled his away his bag of rag and bone with some grey skin stretched over them.

Lockheart rushed off with his patient, leaving the Scotsman alone, sitting in an overstuffed chair, unsure what to do with his hands.

***

It seemed like an eternity to Tobias before the doctor, or whatever he was called, returned.

"Tell me if she's dead. Don't fuck about, don't say how sorry ye are. Just tell me if she's dead." He said.

"We've managed to stabilise her. I'm not sure how long she'll live; I've never seen a human being in such a sad condition. Do you know how she came to be in this state, Mister…"

"Snape. Tobias Snape. Your patient's name is Eileen Snape. And I haven't much of an idea how she got so bad. She run off from home about three months ago, maybe four. I put me foot down, I said I'd have no more fucking smack in our house. We 'ad to give up our son, on account of Ellie and her junkie habits an' her drinkin', an me own drinkin. Us beatin' up on an ignorin' one another, and the boy, poor lad. Mr. Dumbledore looks after 'im now. Sent us both to jail an' we deserved it. Anyway, since they let me out I been trying to stick wi' the terms of me probation. They gave me visitation with me son for it. More visits the better I done. It taught me a lesson, yunno, havin' Sev taken away. Ye see, I want them at least to gi' me more time wi' me boy. I've quit drinkin' hard liquor, only beer an' stout for me. An' I never drink before lunch-time. I'm workin', now, steady, as well. I work on the docks, sometimes wi' the ships, in Liverpool. I'm a seafarin' man, by trade. I been back to sea a few times, I make good money, but I can't afford to leave Ellie for long. She can't look after herself. Ellie ain't taken it so well. She's been to rehab three or four times since they took our boy away and it never took. They took her reason for living when they took Sev away. She were never the mother of the year, but with Sev about she had to try and stay somewhat straight, too look after him. Anyway, we had one of our knock down drag-outs; I won't lie to ye, me wife an I are both violent people. I swore I'd quit hittin' when they took our Sev away, but sometimes I got ter act in self-defence. I may be stronger but she's handy wi' a hex and good wi' blunt objects, an I canna let the woman murder me. This last time, though, she stabbed me in the arm an' I had to go get stitches. I lost me temper. Before I went to hospital, I told her I was done wi' her, and if she could nae get off the smack and quit tryin' to half-murder me all the time then she could get the fuck out, or next time I'd kill her. I dinna mean it, an' when I came home I wasn't mad no more, but she was gone, just the same. I felt terrible, so I went lookin' for Ellie. I found her again in one of her usual flops, an' I told her not to come home until she could stay sober. I just had it. I cann live wi' the woman if she's forever gonna be thrown hexes at me an bein' violent. Well, I got lonely, without me wife or me son, so instead of goin' on a bender I shipped out for awahile, again. I wasn't home one night before me brother come to the house and told me that Ellie turned up and that she was in a real bad way. So I went and found her, and now I've brought here to yer. That's all I know. That fucker probation officer, he told me if I wanted her to quit I should kick her out and she'd come to her senses. It almost killer her, instead! I'm nae a bad man, doc, and I'm tryin ter do right, but I dunno what to do, anymore." Tobias admitted.

"You've done the right thing, bringing Mrs. Snape to us. We'll help her. She needs her own people to help her get better. Now, do you know how long has your wife been an addict and an alcoholic, Mr. Snape?" Dr. Lockheart asked

"I met her when she was 16. I was 21, and she was a junkie then. So that would be, let's see, we married when I was 22, and Sev, me son, he was just 14 two months ago, oh, 15 years at least. More than half her life."

Edgar Lockheart took off his glasses and sat down beside his patient's husband.

"Mr. Snape, I'm sorry, but if you have current visitation rights with your son, and if you wife has any family, I suggest you get them all together. I don't think she's going to survive."

Tobias surprised him by laughing.

"You don't know Ellie." He said.

* * *

***

While his grandparents were finding out what room Eileen was in, Severus flopped down in a chair beside his father.

He looked both ways, and then passed a brown paper bag to Tobias which contained a bottle of Hell's Horntail and a baggie of grass.

"From me own personal stash, Da. I'll bet you and Mum need it."

"Thanks, lad. Now you stay away from the hard stuff. Do like me. Beer and stout. And a little tea, now and then. I don't want you to end up like yer Mum." Tobias warned.

For a witch who wasn't supposed to last the night, Eileen was doing quite well when her parents and her son came to see her.

She was out of bed, sitting up in a chair, reading a book.

Her parents were shocked by how thin and haggard and ill she looked, but didn't say anything.

Her son was not so tactful.

"Jesus, Mum. You look like shit. What are you about, a one woman production of _Naked Lunch_?"

Eileen laughed.

"Something like that. I suppose it's time for me to end my affair with heroin. Before it ends me."

"I'd say so." Aphrodite piped in.

"Sev has to go back to school soon, Ditey. Why don't we wait and let him talk to Ellie, first?" Severus Sr. suggested.

Snape waited until after they were gone to make his offer.

"I'd say so. Look, the doctor says he doesn't want you to be alone long periods of time for the next few months. When Da's at his job, I'll come over at night an' stay with you." Severus volunteered.

Eileen brightened up, immediately. Some of the colour even came back into her face.

"Will the bastards let you?"

"They can't stop me, Mum. I'll do it whether they say so, or not."

"I'd like that, Sev. I know I was a rotten Mum, but I've missed you."

"Me too, Mum. I slipped Da some Horntail for you. Can't quit everything all at once, after all."

"You're a good boy, Sev."

* * *

***

"I'm telling you, Albus, I'll do it whether they say I can, or no. Me Mum needs me. If she sees me, she'll have a reason to try and stay clean and keep on living."

Dumbledore shook his head. Severus was so young, and had already been through so much. At heart he was a good boy, loyal and steadfast and strong.

And when he made up his mind, for good or for ill, there was no shifting him.

"Severus, you're too young to assume complete responsibility for your mother. By all means, you should go and spend time with her, it will be of great help to Eileen, but if she doesn't make it, you can't blame yourself." Dumbledore reminded him.

"She's me Mum. She's not the best Mum a kid ever had but she done the best she could with me. Now it's my turn. And I'm not that young. Me neighbour's daughter, when she turned 14 she was pregnant. She married the bloke and now she's 17 and she's got two kids and a job. I'll be a man next year, so I might as well get a jump on I, and act like one, now." Snape replied.

"Severus, you've been acting like a man since you were ten years old." Dumbledore ruefully replied.

He had to have a war with the Ministry, but Snape got permission to help care for his mother.

Which he would have done whether the Ministry said he could, or not.

* * *

***

It got around the school that Sev Snape's mother was in St. Mungo's drying out, and the usual suspects stopped making fun of him, for the time being.

That is, all except his arch-enemy, who sought him out at lunch.

"Pan's horns, Padfoot, give the kid a break. His Mum's sick." James suggested.

Sirius was James' friend, his best friend, and, unlike Snape he was a good bloke, a nice guy, even-tempered and well-liked. But there was something about old Snivellus that just brought out the worst in Sirius.

"Fuck that shit! You just want to look like a nice bloke for Lily Evans. Honestly, Prongs, I like Lily, she's a good mate, but I wouldn't want to follow Snivellus no matter who the girl was." Sirius retorted.

"Are they shagging? Really?" Peter broke in.

"C'mon, Wormtail. We're a bit young for shagging." James told him.

"Oi, speak for yourself, Prongs." Remus bragged.

"I was speaking for Wormtail." James answered.

They all had a laugh, hoping Sirius would be distracted, but by then, Padfoot was locked on his target.

"So, Snivellus, I hear your junkie mother's in St. Mungo's. Again." Sirius taunted.

"Sirius! How could you? What the fuck is your problem? Jimmy, can't you call him urf?" Lily squawked.

James shrugged his shoulders, helplessly, and put his hands in the air.

"Black, I'm sittin' 'ere, mindin me own business, doin' me fuckin' homework, summat you know nothin' about, and you 'ave to come over 'ere an make fun of me Mum. What are you, a fuckin' child?" Snape retorted, calmly.

Sirius wasn't sure what to say in reply to that.

"I see. I thought so. You see, Lily, Black's tiny little mind is so unbelievably fucking miniscule that it is too small to fathom that I may be light years head of him in terms of emotional maturity, and therefore his pathetic childish "your mama" remarks no longer 'ave any effect on me. Other than to make me realise what a naff punter and a dumb cunt he really is." Snape continued.

"For fuck's sake Sirius, his mother's dying. Leave the poor bastard alone." James Potter protested.

"What do you mean, dying? Snape is your Mum really…dying?" Sirius asked, horrified.

"Not if I can help it. Still, you never can tell." Snape replied, calmly.

"Christ, you're a cold blooded son of a bitch, then, aren't you?" James marvelled.

"What do you expect me to do, Potter? Cry in front of you and Black? Now if you two joy boys will excuse me, I have work to do. Why don't you lot jump on your broomsticks and go play with your balls."

Snape gathered up his books and left the Great Hall for the library.

"You lot, you're quite a piece of work! Sev's a decent bloke, I dunno why you can't fucking leave him alone! I got 'alf a mind to quit Quidditch an' forget I ever met the lot of you! Fucking Southerners!" Lily spat.

She gathered up her stuff and went after Snape.

"He doesn't care if his own mother dies." Sirius marvelled.

"He must. He just doesn't want to let on in front of us." James decided.

"I dunno. She almost beat him to death, once. If my Mum almost beat me to death, I'd be ambivalent about her, too." Remus piped in.

* * *

Snape was not, however, ambivalent about his mother's condition. As he'd promised, while Tobias was at work, on the graveyard shift his four days a week, Severus stayed home with his mother. She was still recovering from severe malnutrition, but more important she had been clean for two months, the longest period Eileen had gone without smack since she became an addict at 15.

Her son and her husband watched her around the clock, to make sure it stayed that way.

When he first started going over to the house, his mother spent much of her time in bed or in front of the telly, but lately she'd been getting back to work, mixing up potions and having customers in for readings, both Muggles and magical folk.

Tonight, she was in her lab, mixing potions.

"'Ello, Mum. I got your bottle of Horntail for you. I'll be in 'ere, doin' me homework." Severus announced.

"Don't you dare drink any of that Horntail, Severus! There's Newcastle Brown and Coke, and orange juice in the fridge if you want something to drink." Eileen called back.

It didn't take long for Snape to finish his homework, and when he was done he joined his mother in her lab, and helped her with her work.

She was still sick, though, and she got tired early and even though he didn't have to help her walk up the stairs to go to bed, Severus did so, anyway.

He waited up until four in the morning, when Tobias got home.

His father took him to the local, where they had a beer and a meal, and then Severus returned to Hogwarts, caught a few hours of sleep, and then got up for school.

Some nights Lily came with him, and they had dinner at her parents' house. Some nights Severus fell asleep in his books before Tobias even came home and Eileen had to look after him, putting his parchments and quills and books away.

A few times, on Friday nights he showed up at the house half-potted and smelling of weed and his mother would warn him about saying off the hard stuff, and put him to bed. Sometimes Severus came over when Tobias had a night off and the three of them would watch telly and have dinner and few beers together, and watch telly.

They would prove to be the best four months the Snape family ever had together, and Ellie, Toby and Sev were all upset to see them end.

Severus promised to come and see them at least once a week afterward, even though he wasn't allowed to go.

* * *

***

Lily Evans had reached the limits of human endurance insofar as staying awake and studying, so she began to pack in her quills and her parchments and books.

"That's it! I'm absolutely fucked. I'm going to bed?"

From the forbidden blue haze of cigarette smoke, Moony and Sev looked at her like she was mad.

They each had a swig of a little vial from Sev's pocket about six hours before and they were still flying beyond the outer limits of human endurance, chain smoking and chattering like fiends.

"Have a sip of this you'll be a new man I mean a new bird fuck that was funny man wasn't it Snape wasn't it?' Lupin said.

"What the fuck are you two on now?" Lily demanded

"Amphetamine sulphate and dextroamphetamine in a solution of caffeine distilled essence of werewolf fur and mandrake root in other words the speeeediest fucking speed that ever sped its me own invention and its selling like a fucking house afire have another fag Remus want some Lily?" Snape replied.

"No! I keep telling you, I stop at weed. Wot are you going to do to come down? Smack?" Lily demanded.

"No a few drops of tincture of opium in Hell's Horntail I make it meself it sells well too don't it Remus?" Snape replied.

"I'm his best fucking customer ha ha ha hahahahaha…"

As they both cackled hysterically and smoked and choked and had another tipple from the vial, Lily took her leave.

"Fucking nutters. They'll end up a couple of fucking junkies, both of 'em." She pronounced.

* * *

***

The day after the exams, Snape tried to come down easy on his home-made laudanum and a little grass, but he ended up crashing, viciously. His stomach, full of dope and booze and unsavoury magical ingredients revolted against him.

He spent quite a bit of time in the loo doing some full scale yawning until he was puking up green goo, and promised himself he would never, ever, ever go on a two week speed binge ever as long as he lived before crawling into bed and dying.

So it was with something akin to a combination of rage and heartbreak that he woke up when he was almost asleep when he heard Luke calling his name, demanding that he wake up.

Waking up was the last thing a groggy Snape felt like doing.

"Why? Is the fucking school on fire? If it isn't, I'll do you up a treat in the morning."

"Fuck you! How could you not be a virgin, you ugly prick?" Malfoy demanded.

Snape smiled to himself, and chuckled, evilly.

"The usual way, Luke. I fucked a couple of birds."

"Who? How much did you pay them?"

"You're funny, mate. Nobody you really know. I mean, when I was little, I seen me Mum and Da do it. They thought I was asleep in front of the telly, but I wasn't. And this girl in the neighbourhood, her Mum was a prozzie, and she seen her do it all the time. We was curious, so we done it. Coupla years ago." Snape explained.

"How can you have fucked someone when you were eleven?"

"Well, she reached her hand into me jeans and copped hold of me old fellow and it got hard and I fucked her. I dunno. How else?"

"Bullshit, Snape! When you're eleven, your dick's too small to fuck anyone with!"

Snape laughed.

"Maybe yours was, Luke. Mine was about five inches long."

"When you were eleven? Fuck you!" Malfoy retorted.

"Well it was! You know wot? The other birds I done was these bints in 5th year. They didn't know I was only a third year, on account of I'm tall, and I got hair on me balls. And now it's seven and a half inches long." Snape bragged.

"You lucky bastard. Well, I suppose the gods had to give you something in exchange for you being so fucking ugly. I'll catch up to you someday." Malfoy told him.

"Wot about you, Luke?"

"I fucked Arabella Baxter a couple of times."

"You an' everybody else in the school except Hagrid and Dumbledore. Still, she's a nice enough bint. She was nice enough to me." Snape replied.

Luke was about to disagree and say he thought Arabella was a real pig, but he and Snape were then rudely interrupted.

"Oi, Snape, I ain't queer or anything, but, can I see it?" Goyle asked, from across the room.

"Don't be fucking disgusting, you poof! Go back to sleep!" Malfoy chastised him.

Snape pulled up his covers and fell asleep, laughing.

* * *

***

Lily wasn't the girliest of girls. She was the tee shirt and jeans types, but she found herself looking through her clothes to find something alluring to wear when she went home with Sev on Friday to hang out with him while he looked after his Mum.

Puberty creeps up on some people, but it didn't creep up on Lily Evans. A few months after her 13th birthday, she and Sev went to a Who concert. Sev being Sev, he found a way to sneak backstage, blagging some roadie about them being wizards, too.

Lily had been a Who fan since she and Sev were just kids, but she really didn't think of any of them the way girls thought about men until she met Pete Townshend.

It was first lust at first sight.

He said something to her about Hogwarts never changing and made a joke about Albus Dumbledore that was really funny and got Sev laughing, but Lily scarcely heard it, because at that moment something gave way between her ears and between her legs, setting off an all-consuming inferno that burned every day of her life to cinders charred as anything that was ever coughed up out of Hell, ever since.

The boys she went to school with just didn't do it for her. They weren't smart enough, they weren't man enough, and they were all so much the same in their bland British public school similitude. There was nothing to them but a tired sort of underwear model similarity.

Pretty boys with empty heads.

She was far too proud and too much of a realist to be a groupie, so Lily did her best to try and keep her mind on her work when something far more ludicrous and embarrassing than developing a sudden and life-devouring urge to shag her favourite rock star befell her.

It wasn't as if Sev didn't wear disreputable rock tee shirts and canvas trainers every day of his life. Nor did he start wearing his flares any tighter; that would have been impossible. He was never any less a tough, a wiseass, and a son of a bitch, but one day, with his shirt and his jeans clinging to his body the right way, and the fag in his mouth hanging at the right angle, and the sun catching the studs on his leather vest in a certain light, Lily realised that her best mate was turning into quite a man.

And there was nothing pretty about him. Sev was barely 14, but he looked like a man looked, and he was smart enough to act like one and think like one as well.

It embarrassed her how badly she came to want him. Not to mention that what she'd done under the influence of that wickedly potent pot the day Eileen went to hospital positively horrified Lily. She tried to put the whole matter behind her, but when she found herself making for the Slytherin dungeons with a beater's bat to knock Sev's head in after she heard Arabella Baxter talking about how big his cock was in the women's bog, Lily realised she had to do something about her wholly inappropriate feelings.

She quietly learnt the contraceptive charm and got some contraceptive potion, just to be on the safe side, and hoped that if he had to let her down, her friend would let her down easy, and not be too snarky about it.

If he was, well, there was always the Beater's Bat.

* * *

***

Eileen could tell that Lily had big plans, so she went to bed early that night.

When she found out that Lily knew the spell and had drunk the potion, she quietly went off to bed, leaving Lily and Sev to watch telly.

Snape was vainly attempting to get up the courage to make a faintly indecent proposal to his best friend, also the aforementioned sex goddess of his etc and so on when Lily turned away from the telly and punched him in the arm, for no good reason.

"Owwww! Wot the fuck?"

_Was she reading his thoughts?_

"Wot about you and Arabella Baxter, you cunt!" Lily demanded.

"Wot's it to you?" Snape retorted.

"Wot about me?"

"Wot about you?"

"Look, Sev, I don't want to own you, cos I would never let a man own me. I'll do what I want. But I'd like to think I was in there, somewhere, yunno?

"Fuck me, Lily, I'd always put you first."

"Me too. I wish you were the first."

"Who was it? Not Potter. Or Black. I'll kill them!"

"Some bloke from Merseyside Magic. I thought he'd know what he was doing because he was older. I told him I was 16. He didn't. It all turned out wrong. He wasn't any good at all, and he tore me up a treat."

They both looked at one another, feeling stupid and embarrassed.

"I wouldn't do that to you, Lily. I know what I'm doing. It's in me blood, innit it? If I was him, I would 'ave made you light up like Hogwarts fookin' Christmas Tree in the Great Hall." Snape blurted.

As soon as he said it, he felt like getting Tobias' shotgun, putting the barrel in his mouth and pulling the trigger.

"I wish you would, Sev. I wasn't just all over you because of the pot, that day in the stall. I never had it so bad for anybody as I got it for you. Not even Pete, and God knows I'd crawl naked on me belly through mud and broken glass to get him to fuck me. Wait. That didn't come out right." Lily fumbled, desperately.

Snape fumbled desperately out of his tee shirt.

"It don't matter. I got the general idea. Let's go upstairs."

Snape left his tee shirt on the floor and crashing into one another and tripping over their own hasty feet he and Lily made their way upstairs and into Severus' old bedroom, where he closed, locked and warded his door.

He was about to unbuckle his belt, but Lily got there first.

"Let me do it. You don't know, Sev, how many times I've though about undoing your flies, and wot I was up to when I was thinkin' it." Lily panted.

With his last shred of coherent thought, Severus used his wand to turn his old turntable with the tinny speaker in it on, to at least make a pretence that his Mum wouldn't know or figure out what was going on.

* * *

***

You see, the problem was, that Eileen was right about her son.

There were two Sev Snapes.

The one who was good was very, very good.

And the one who was bad was Rosemary's Baby.

His foster parents, and his grandparents, and even the Evanses did all that was in their power to nurture the good Snape, and exorcise the bad.

They were optimistic, and didn't believe what Eileen had to say, that her son was a Dark Wizard, like his mother before him, that Sev was himself and his shadow brother all at the same time, and you couldn't destroy one at the expense of the other.

As it turned out, she was right, and they were wrong.

* * *

***

The summer before his fourth year, Severus Snape had his first Wizarding job.

He became Professor Slughorn's lab assistant.

For two months, Snape scoured and scourgified cauldrons, dried dragon's blood, cut mandrake root and a myriad of other tasks. The Potions Master and Dumbledore thought he was working for pin money, but Snape was secretly sending any and all money that Albus gave him from his monthly Ministry allotment home to his parents.

He was only briefly in Liverpool before he and his grandfather went to Severus Prince's "cottage" in the Carpathians to gather potion ingredients that would only be found in the Land Beyond the Forest.

Late at night, in his grandfather's labyrinthine magical archive beneath the black Transylvanian Earth, young Severus burned the candle deep into the mystical, the arcane and the occult that was the secret, ancient heart of the staid British Wizarding World.

The Prince family had been among the founding members of the Order of the Magus, around the time that the Romans invaded Great Britain. A witch or wizard's first position in the order was as an Acolyte, sponsored by a degree-bearing member.

The Acolyte made a general study of the Five Disciplines, Magick of the Earth, Sex Magick, Magick of the Arts, Magick of the Sciences, and Alchemy. When he or she had the required knowledge, understanding, and skill in the rudiments of the Five Disciplines, they could attain the rank of Inititate. This milestone was marked by the Initiate getting a magical tattoo from the Goblins. For the Initiate, the tattoo would represent general magical principles

The Initiate would then choose one of the Five Disciplines to study, based on their own aptitude and the counsel of their Sponsor. There were three degrees of Mastery in each Discipline. Each degree of Mastery in each discipline had its own set of magical tattoos which the Magus would receive. They also had the choice of pursuing an additional discipline after reaching the First Degree in any discipline.

Not many wizards made it further in the Order of the Magus than Inititiate, and out of hundreds of thousands, only thousands made it to the First Degree. Perhaps a few hundred witches and Wizards became Second Degree Master Magi, and the amount of Third Degree Magi in any discipline were under one hundred.

Most witches and wizards did not become Acolytes until their late teens, or Initiates until their twenties.

This, however, was not an acceptable goal for the son of Eileen Prince and the grandson of Severus and Aphrodite Prince. Severus Sr. was a Master Magus in the Third Degree of Alchemy, Sex Magick, and the Magick of the Earth. Aphrodite was a Master Magus in the Third Degree of Magick of the Earth and Magick of the Sciences.

Eileen Prince was a Master Magus in the Second Degree of both Sex and Alchemy, and was working on attaining the Third Degree in both.

Severus Snape became an Acolyte at 12, and that summer, became an Initiate at 14.

He went to the Goblins to sweat through his first tattoo.

Muttering the old incantation in old Elvish to himself, gritting his teeth in-between sips of Hell's Horntail.

_In blood and pain seared through bone and brain a son of Albion this wizard shall remain. And from this Earth which gave me birth I draw strength not to scream. Wand in hand my soul my land. Until I feast in kingdom halls beneath gentle hills of rolling green._

With the Transylvanian goblin tattoo of the tree of life surrounded by runes fresh on good Sev's bicep, shadow Snape and his brother took their money from the summer's work and kitted themselves out in yobbo glory for the return to school.

With a hopeful heart that his grandson would not lose his way as his mother had, Severus Prince presented his grandson, with his first Alchemist's coat; the one presented to him before his third year at Hogwarts by his Sponsor, Albus Dumbledore.

Albus was one of only three living wizards and witches who was a Master Magus in the Third Degree of all the Five Disciplines.

It was Severus Snape's ambition to be the fourth.

The quarter-satyr Potions Master walked proudly with his Alchemy Initiate grandson, and made no attempt to hide his hoof and horns, when Severus Snape made quite an entrance onto platform 9 ¾ to catch the Hogwarts Express.

The Mauraders regarded Snape with curiosity as he said goodbye to his grandfather Prince.

"Did he get a lot taller?" Peter Pettigrew asked, nervously.

"So what if he done? Look at him in his flash snakeskin boots and that Death's Head buckle. Who does he think he is? He's copying you. His coat looks like yours, Moony." Sirius snorted.

"That's an Alchemy Initiate's coat. I'm an Initiate of Magick of the Sciences." Lupin ventured.

Sirius gave him an incredulous look.

"Come off it, mate! Don't tell me you believe in all that old timey bullshit mumbo jumbo? Fuck me!" Sirius exclaimed.

"What do you think Muggles think magic is? How can we be wizards and practise fucking magic if we don't believe in our own fucking mysticism?" Lupin argued.

"Don't pay any attention to him, Moony. He doesn't want any part of the Order of the Magus because his father wants him to. Sirius is strictly C of D. The best cure for a spiritual understanding of the cosmos as befitting a wizard is being brought up in British Druidism." James Potter wisecracked.

"A load of bollocks, all of it." Sirius confirmed

"I still like his coat. I should get one, then. Maybe I'll get Dumbledore to propose me to be an Acolyte. Where'd you get that coat, Snape?" James Potter called.

"From my grandfather. The Potions Master." Snape snapped.

"Not from his father. The Muggle drunk." Sirius sneered.

Snape favoured him with a chilly smile, as he lit up a fag in what Peter Pettigrew thought was a very Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry Man With No Name sort of way.

"Someday, Black, when this ridiculous farce of an education is behind us, I'm going to challenge you to a duel. And I'm going to kill you. I'll put me wand in me boot and kill you with me bare hands." Snape threatened.

"I'll see you the day after graduation, Snivellus. Call it a date." Sirius promised.

Snape hefted up his trunk and got onto the train.

"Gear." Was all he said.

Remus pushed on the end of the trunk, making it look like he was trying to trip Snape.

"Oi, Snape, 'ow about a drink an' a toke in the bog to celebrate our Initiation? I've got the smoke." He whispered.

"I've got the Horntail." Snape whispered back.

The Marauders piled onto the Hogwarts Express shortly after, with the exception of James Potter, who stuck around to wait for Lily Evans.

"Can I help you with your trunk, Lily?" James asked.

"No, I'll just use _wingardium leviosa_. Thanks, though." Lily replied.

"So, I'll see you at Quidditch practise. Alright?" he asked.

"Cool." Lily replied.

She boarded the Hogwarts Express and James was about to get on after her when he felt a tug on his robe.

He imagined the man in the flash suit with the ginger hair and the rather chilly green eyes was Lily's father; there was a strong resemblance.

"What's your name, lad?" he asked.

"James Potter."

"Well, James Potter, you seem like a nice, gently bred country lad from a good family. So let a villain give you a piece of advice about another villain. I've known Sev Snape since he was a baby. I know his Mum, and his Dad, I live on the same estate as they do, in the same street. He's only 14 years old, but that lad's a villain if there ever was one, a right nasty piece of work, God save 'im. He don't have much in the world, but 'e counts my Lily among what he do have. And if you try to take her from him, he'll kill you. Where young Sev comes from, a man will cut another man's bits and bobs off, stuff 'em in his gob and leave 'im to bleed or choke to death in the street for pullin' 'is bird. You'd best leave Lily alone. Awright?" Artie Evans advised.

James Potter tried to play it cool, but his face went fish-belly white.

"Yes sir." He said, and fairly ran onto the train.

Artie Evans took a few steps back, and found himself standing with Orion Black and Severus Prince.

They both looked about as happy as he did.

"…and the gods know I've got no quarrel with you, Severus. Not my old Potions Master at university! Congratulations on your namesake making Initiate so young. Regulus is an Acolyte, and he's a few years behind Sirius! I don't think Sirius will ever join the Order. To him, magic is just a great lot of nifty tricks that he can somehow do for whatever reason. He doesn't believe in anything. All he cares about is Quidditch. The only tradition he's interested in is this ridiculous feud." Orion Black was saying.

"That old feud's been dead since my grandfather's time, Orion. Why would our Severus and your Sirius want to dredge up old bad blood?" Severus Prince replied.

Artie Evans lit a cigarette.

"If yuh don't mind a suggestion from the likes of me, fink it's cos bad blood don't never stay quiet. It always bubbles up, one way or another. The Wops over in Italy, when they kill a man, they do for 'is 'ole family cos they know that. And it's bad blood between all five of those lads, old and new. It'll end badly, like as not." Artie ventured.

Orion Black gave him an odd look.

"Are you saying one of our children is going to kill another one of our children?" he asked.

"I dunno. But something's coming. And it ain't good. I can smell it." Artie replied.

Severus Prince and Orion Black had a better idea of what might have been coming, and they could not help but agree.

* * *

***

"What made you choose the tree and the runes?" Luke Malfoy asked, as he pretended not to admire his friend's tattoo.

"I dunno. It's wot came to me. When I make First Degree in Alchemy I'll get the ouroborous, the serpent devouring itself. For First Degree in Sex Magick, I'll get the Thor's Hammer, and the Celtic Cross when I make Second Degree in Alchemy Magus. If I ever get to the 3rd Degree in Sex Magick, I'm getting the Sign of the Dragon." Snape told him.

"Blimey, you got big plans." Goyle broke in.

"Of course, he does, you moron! He's a Prince. Not some fuckup Black, or a no-name like you. You know, Sev, you really should come with me and these two nimrods to the next Meeting. Lord Voldemort is a Master in the Third Degree of all the Five Disciplines." Luke encouraged.

Snape recoiled from the mere suggestion.

"Nothing fucking doing! I don't want nothing to do with no fucking nutter what is the wizard version of Hitler. You see how he ended up, and all his followers. You lot can subscribe to whatever goony religion you like. Purity of blood an' oll that shite. All I want out of life is Lily Evans, power, and money. I'm not likely to get any being some poofter's bum boy toady." Snape claimed.

"You've been spending too much time with Dumbledore. Lord Voldemort isn't suggesting we kill anybody. He's not another Hitler .He just thinks that Half-Bloods and Pure-Bloods should be separate from Mudbl-,I mean, Muggle-Borns. And how much money and power are you likely to have fooling out the road Dumbledore as mapped for you, replacing Slughorn teaching in this place? Just come to one meeting. He's asked us to bring you." Luke wheedled.

"He knows me? How?" Snape asked.

"He knows your family. He and your grandfather were old school chums." Luke told him.

Snape became curious. What would his grandfather want to do with this loony?

He decided to find out.

"My family, then? I suppose I'd best go, see wot it is 'e wants from us." He agreed.

* * *

***

Tom Marvolo Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort, noticed a curious thing about the group of Hogwarts students from Slytherin House who had attended his latest clandestine meeting.

One of them, a tall, scrawny boy with very long black hair and a broad-bridged hawk's beak for a nose, dressed like a Muggle yobbo, hadn't paid any attention.

He had strutted in with a hard nut swagger and a permanent sneer on his lips, from which dangled a cigarette. He had his familiar with him, a rather large iguana on a leash, and smoked through the entire programme, with his feet up on the table.

"Are there any questions?" Voldemort asked, as he reached the end of his speech.

Nineteen faces regarded him with an expression of respect and awe, and one regaled him with a raised eyebrow and a look of contempt and disbelief.

"Yeah. Are you serving any real drinks, mate? I can't stand havin a full stomach stone cold sober. It fucks up me digestion. Cos if you're not gonna serve no fucking drinks, I'm going home." Called the black-haired wizard.

Voldemort smiled.

He suspected he'd found what he was looking for.

"You are all dismissed, except for my thirsty young friend."

When the room was empty, Voldemort removed the glamour from himself that created his fearsome appearance, and revealed a distinguished looking wizard in the prime of life, with exquisitely barbered black hair only greying slightly at the temples, and a neatly goatish Van Dyke beard.

"Nice disguise, mate. But I sawr right through it." The boy bragged.

He was positively stuffed into his flared Levis such that you could see he had his wand in one pocket and a switchback in the other, not to mention the weaponry he was packing in around the flies.

Considerable for a lad his age, but he was not Voldemort's type. The Dark Lord had a reference for good-looking young blonds of both genders who had an Elvish cast.

Besides, this was Eileen's son.

The young wizard probably had some sort of weapon tucked into his stacked-heel snakeskin engineer-style boots, and one of the skinny forearms he folded over the Who insignia on his chest had a goblin tattoo on it.

He had on a black canvas frock coat with leather and velvet trim and brass buttons hanging on the chair behind him. It was an Alchemy Initiate's coat, used but still in good condition, and the gods only knew what this clever lad had secreted in its many magical pockets.

The boy had potential.

"I wouldn't think of serving expensive spirits to that lot, but if you would be interested, young wizard, I'd like to buy you a drink." Tom Riddle offered.

It was hard for Tom to see Eileen in this lad; she had been beautiful in a willowy and delicate way, and her son, was rough-looking and raw-boned, with broad shoulders that his skinny chest had not yet grown into.

He would be quite a strong man, when he grew to manhood, with the constitution of an Ox. That was something the Muggle Scotsman had given him that would serve him better than his mother's delicate beauty.

Then, a crafty look passed through the young Slytherin's black eyes as he unfolded his long limbs and stood up, pulling his tee shirt down to his heavy leather belt with a death's head buckle.

They were Eileen's eyes. Very large and expressive, beautiful, even. The irises were a deep dark brown that looked almost black, with flecks of green and gold.

They spoke the volumes that the lad would never put into words.

Truly, this was Eileen's son.

"I ain't bent and I'm no joy boy, either." He replied in a thick Scouse accent.

"My dear boy, I could have had every mouth, arsehole, and pussy in this room if I wanted to. It's your mind I'm interested in. You may just have the makings of a fine man of business."

At the mention of money the boy smiled, sardonically, his dark eyes flashing sardonically over his beaky nose in a predatory, shark-like manner, revealing a mouthful of crookedy working-class teeth, already festooned with crowns.

"That's wot I've been waiting to hear about through all that bullshit and GBH on the ears you been layin' out at these meetings. I didn't see where there was any profit, or any point in all this neo-Nazi racialist propaganda, except maybe to excite the wallets of some of these empty-headed toffs. So, where does the lolly for all this come from, and, putting the fascist rhetoric aside, what is it you really want?" he replied.

That was quite a mouthful coming from a working-class Scouser.

Eileen's son. Severus' grandson. Dear Severus, they had been the best of friends for many years, until Dumbledore's meddling drove a wedge between them. And, most likely, drove Eileen away from him, into the arms of the Muggle Scotsman, and bad and ruin.

Her son was certainly the product of an unstable family, his Prince blood mixed with satyr, vela, and worst, Muggle Scotsman. It sent an unusual pang of pain into Lord Voldemort's heart, thinking about Eileen's fate, and musing on how the boy standing before him should, by rights, have been his son, a Prince in fact as well as by blood. Not an unfortunate waif raised in a degenerate home who ended up becoming, irony of ironies, Albus Dumbledore's ward.

A boy on the cusp of manhood, and perhaps, if that fool Dumbledore was in charge of him, disaster.

A boy who needed Tom Marvolo Riddle to take him under his wing.

To be the father he never had, but should have had.

"Be patient, Severus. I intend to reveal everything to you. In time. Now, I assume you're already an acolyte. Have you a mentor for when you become an Initiate?" Voldemort asked.

Snape rolled up his sleeve and showed the Dark Lord his tattoo.

If you looked closely, you could see the mark of the Transylvanian Goblins in the bark of the tree.

"Very impressive, Severus. I should have known that your grandfather would make sure you were following in the Prince family tradition. I was made an Initiate at your age, as well. I have the same tattoo. Most likely from the same sadistic, money-hungry goblins. Have you ever tasted good firewhiskey, Severus?" Tom Riddle asked

"No."

"Then you are in for quite a treat. My study is this way."

"Look, mate, not to be a cunt about it, but so you were an old mate of me grandfather? Why should you care?"

"That's a fair question, Severus. Your mother and I were once engaged to be married. She was an innocent, then, just a girl, really. She fell pregnant, due to my carelessness, and ran away from me to the Muggle world, where she aborted our child. And met your father, who is, like as not. A better man for her than I could have been. Still, I loved your mother, truly. She was the first, last and only woman who ever moved a man such as me to that sort of emotion. I've come to think of you, then, as the son I never had. I know you don't feel as though you fit into the clean, shiny little world Albus Dumbledore is grooming you for, and I imagine that you don't want to return to Spinner's End and go to work for your girl's father. There is another way. A better way. My way. I'd like to show it to you. Will you at least give me a chance to do so, if for no other aeson, than to pay you the debt I owe your mother and your grandfather?" Lord Voldemort explained.

Snape was surprised that this wizard could know so well the sorts of beasts of uncertainty that gnawed at his soul. If there was another way, some path that lay between Heaven and Hell, Sev was certainly interested in it.

"I think I'll have that drink." He agreed.

* * *

***

For the first time since he came to Hogwarts, Severus Snape's life really began to make sense.

After all, the last four years had been something of a high wire act.

If he'd never left Spinner's End, then he never would have known any better. Out of school by 15 if he ever went, then on the bottle, on the dole, on the docks, or on the fiddle with the likes of Tommy Boy Evans.

But then he came to Hogwarts, and the world of clean shirts and regular mornings that, try as he might, he never quite fit into.

It wasn't that he didn't love his father by law, and he was certainly grateful to Albus. But he didn't know if he could live in the world that the Hogwarts headmaster and his wife painted for him. It was bright and rosy with crisp white edges, like those on the white oxford shirts you put on for your regular mornings.

There was no room in it for his secrets. Albus and Minerva didn't know that he still smoked, let alone about his drinking, and his use of occasional amalgamations of drugs and potions. Medicines, really. Since he'd started mixing up home-made laudanum with tincture of opium and Hell's Horntail, his life and Remus Lupin's were a lot easier for the tipple they had every day at lunch-time. Just a glass.

And Albus certainly didn't know about Arabella Baxter, or the two fifth years, or Lily.

As Pete Townshend observed, Lily, oh Lily.

Tom Riddle, on the other hand, was a far more understanding mentor, with a common-sense view of the world. He considered his new protégé's drinking and recreational drug use a sign of youthful high spirits, and he was notoriously liberal when it came to sex.

Riddle was a man of business, and some of it was the kind of business that Severus had grown up amidst. Dope, prozzies, numbers, loans, what-have-you. People wanted these things, why not provide them? They were willing to pay, why not take the money? It was all going to a good cause, and so was the cash he siphoned off from the pureblood marks he ran his great neo-fascist Lord Voldemort scam on. They didn't need the money, but they needed the meaning being a "Death Eater" gave to their boring, silly, aristocratic lives.

A few legs were broken, a few shiners, a bloody nose or two. Bints were rumped and the odd junkie popped off. But junkies do have the tendency to OD, and nobody was really hurt, so where was the problem?

Better yet, there was a place in it for a lad with brains and ambition and talent, not to mention a good right hook and the potential to end up a man strong as an Ox. Snape had already started to brew the "special potions" his new mentor trafficked in, and he was making a lot of money for a lad his age.

Enough to send nice fat envelopes of pound notes and sacks of galleons home to Mum and Da, with much to spare in his Gringotts vault.

He wasn't the type for flash clothes, at least not yet. But when he was out of school and he was formally Tom's left hand wizard, he'd start kitting himself out in those smart Tommy Boy Evans suits. Buy a Triumph motorbike and an Aston-Martin. Big house in London, and one in Liverpool. In Woolton, or even Hoylake. Fully detached. Keep Lily in the style her father had accustomed her to. Nice house for his Mum and Dad.

Doctors.

Shrinks.

Rehab.

And when he walked down the street in his flash suit people would say, "There goes Severus Snape" with a mixture of awe and respect and fear like it meant something.

And it would.

It would mean a damn sight more that fucking about being a fucking teacher for dumb shit yobboes like the naff thick motherfuckers he went to school with.

It wasn't quite Spinner's End, and it wasn't quite Madame Puddifoot's, but it was a world that Snape was happy to live in, one where he knew a boy like him could become a prosperous man.

* * *

***

Lily became friends with Remus Lupin, and Jimmy Potter, but it was hard for her to learn to like Sirius Black, considering that he was Sev's worst enemy.

Through playing Quiddtich, though, she did get to know him, and she was puzzled. Other than his irrational hatred for Sev, Sirius was a really nice, easy-going bloke. He had a great sense of humour, and even though his taste in music was truly crap, she was easily able to befriend him.

Generally, Lily was welcome in the company of the Marauders.

Remus was her confidante, she could express to him her concerns about Sev getting involved with Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters. Snape assured her that hatred of Muggles and Muggle-Borns was all a load of bollocks to cover up Voldemort's real intentions, but Lily wasn't so sure that the Dark Wizard wasn't lying, and using Sev for his own purposes.

Jimmy never failed to make her laugh. He was as cheery and devil-may-care as Sev was dour and methodical. He wasn't troubled by her association with Severus Snape, and it was always his opinion that Snape was only in with Voldemort for the money; he was a little too smart to fall for all that daft Death Eater business.

There was still something off-putting about Peter; he was too much the toady for Lily to really trust him.

As for Sirius, he seemed convinced that Snape was demonic, and he was always trying to convince her to get away from him, and pushed her towards James.

For his part, Sev was bemused that Lily chose to associate with Remus and Jimmy, but he was equally as vehement that Sirius Black was a brainless dolt who couldn't be trusted; he was stupid and arrogant and easily influenced, Sev thought, and also wealthy and spoilt enough to be used to getting his own way.

They each had the same thing to say about the other.

"An arse'ole like that is capable of anything. You'd better stay away from the likes of him, if you know what's good for you."

Lily, however, didn't see any reason to stay away from Sirius, and she was unable to stay away from Sev. He was still her best friend, but she was head over heels in lust with him, and fairly sure she loved him, as well.

That was why, despite James jocular suggestions to the contrary, she worried about Sev's association with Lord Voldemort. Secretly, she vowed to try and pry Sev out of the Dark Lord's clutches, and promised herself she'd do it, no matter what she had to do.

It was war.

* * *

***

Normally, Chrimble and dress robes were two things that Severus Snape hated, but this year was different.

He had worked for it like a demon, and his hard work paid off.

On the night of the Winter Solstice, Snape was to be made a Magus of the First Degree in Alchemy. He had devoted most of his days and nights to study, to try and reach the milestone his mother had grandfather had both reached when they were 15.

Most Wizards didn't achieve First Degree status in their lifetimes, and Snape had about three weeks to go before he was 15, beating out his Mum and his Grandfather.

He had washed his hair, and got carefully dressed in the black and green robes his Magus Mentor had bought for him, and put his Alchemy Initiate's coat on over his robes.

With his heart in his mouth and sober as a judge, his forearm still burning with pain from his new Goblin tattoo, he walked into the darkened and empty meeting hall.

"This way, Severus. Follow the sound of my voice."

Snape followed the sound of his Sponsor's voice until he was standing right in front of the wizard.

"Hold out your arm, Severus. _Lumos_!"

Tom Riddle's wand burst into bright green light.

"Roll up your sleeve." He told his pupil.

Snape rolled up his sleeve.

Tom Riddle touched his naked wand to Snape's skin.

Severus felt the green splotch attach itself to his flesh, like a living thing, and watched it writhe and mutate into the Dark Mark.

It didn't look like any of the Dark Marks he'd ever seen, though. It was far more ornate, and the serpent had two death's heads.

"Congratulations, Sev. You've also become the youngest of my supporters to wear the Dark Mark. Your Mark bears two heads because you know the true nature of our endeavour. One head for you, and one for me."

Tom Riddle passed his wand over the Mark, and it took on the appearance of an elaborate Slytherin Crest.

"Only you can remove this glamour, and only do it when it is absolutely necessary, Severus. Pass your wand over the crest three times, then place the tip right between the serpent's eyes. Then say my name. My real name, not Lord Voldemort." Riddle instructed.

Severus tried the spell; it worked.

After a brief showing, the glamour returned.

Tom Riddle put one hand on the Dark Mark and the other on Snape's Ouroborous tattoo.

"Severus Tobias Snape, you are now a Master Magus of the First Degree in the Discipline of Alchemy, and a Death Eater of the First Degree." He intoned.

Snape finally smiled, and so did his mentor.

He embraced his protégé.

"Congratulations, Severus. I couldn't be prouder of you even if I was your father."

"Thank you, Tom. You've really been like a Dad to me."

The Dark Lord's icy blue eyes became as wet as those of his protégé.

"Severus, you may be Albus Dumbledore's son by law, and Tobias Snape's son by blood, but you are my son in spirit. You will be my heir." He pronounced.

"Your heir, Tom?"

"Yes, Severus. I will die, one day, and when I do, all that I have will be yours. I hereby swear an oath to that, an Unbreakable Vow."

Magic swirled around them as the oath bound the boy and the man together.

"I will teach you everything that I know, and show you the true way of the magical universe. Tonight is your first step along the path to enlightenment. Well done, my boy." Lord Voldemort finished.

Snape was filled with pride in both of his accomplishments.

And such it was that, three weeks or so shy of his 15th birthday, both good Snape and his shadow brother became a Man.

For good or for ill, he set his feet on the path of his adult destiny, and left his boyhood behind.


End file.
